Weld County resident says fracking is costing him sleep

Homeowner: When it happens at night, it's 'unreal'

Mike Lozinski says he's tired of not being able to get enough of the nighttime sleep he needs in order to be to be alert on his daytime job.

The problem, Lozinski said, is that he has frequently been awakened and kept awake by the noise from the drilling and fracking that's been going on this summer at oil and gas wells near his rural Firestone-area home.

That, in turn, has sometimes threatened his ability to be as alert and rested as he must be in order to carry out his daytime responsibilities as an air traffic controller at the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center in Longmont.

Lozinski said Friday that his sleep deprivation "has become a safety issue with me" because in his work, "I'm dealing with lives."

Said Lozinski: "I don't care if they frack, but they're affecting my job."

He said he has had to take several days off because he was either too tired to be sure he could do his traffic control work or had to leave early because he was worried about falling asleep after he got there.

"I'm using up all my leave," he said.

Lozinski's home sits on a small acreage at 11755 Weld County Road 15, and he said the southeast corner of the property is only about 325 yards away from the nearest Encana Oil and Gas well.

He said that is one of three nearby wells, including another Encana well site about 600 yards away from his property and an Andarko Petroleum Corporation well that's about half mile away, where hydraulic fracturing — the process of injecting a pressurized mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the well bores to free up deep-underground petroleum deposits — has been going on since July.

Mike Lozinski, shown here at his rural Firestone-area property on Friday afternoon, says he's been struggling to get enough sleep in he past month or so because of the noise from an Encana Oil and Gas' hydraulic fracturing procedures at that company's wells a short distance from Lozinski's home on Weld County Road 15. (Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call)

Lozinski said some of those wells "were here already here when I got here" and moved into the home about 15 years ago. He said they apparently were being re-drilled this summer, and the work has included directional and horizontal drilling that 's intended to extend tap more deposits than could be accessed by the original wells.

The fracking noise is sporadic, Lozinski said, with the worst noises coming when the oil and gas companies are building up the pressures needed to inject the fluids into the wells and while the fluids are being injected, a process he said can last several hours each time it happens.

"During the day, it's no big deal," he said, but when it happens at night, it's "unreal."

'When you're lying in bed, you can feel it'

Encana spokeswoman Wendy Wiedenbeck said in a Saturday email to the Times-Call that "we've had issues getting our decibel levels . . .noise down at this site," but that "we've been working closely with noise control experts to identify and mitigate the noise."

Said Wiedenbeck: "We anticipate wrapping up this stage" of fracking "by the end of next week."

Fracking at all three nearby wells reportedly is scheduled to conclude by the end of this month, Lozinski said. But he said he wants the companies to at least cease nighttime fracking now, even if that would mean extending daytime fracking for several more weeks.

He said there's been "a humming noise that vibrates my house continually while the noise is at its loudest. My house doesn't move, but when you're lying in bed, you can feel it."

Lozinski said, "I cannot get a good night's sleep. I wake up some days with headaches."

He said that there have been times he has gone to work "sleepy, with a mild headache" and wound up leaving because of his duty to ensure the safety of the aircraft crews and passengers the control center monitors.

Lozinski said he has met and communicated with Encana representatives about his concerns but that he's not satisfied with the response he has gotten thus far.

He said Encana offered at one point to pay the costs of temporarily checking Lozinski, his wife Tammy, their son Ryan, who's a Colorado State University student, and daughter Kari, a Mead High School student, into an area hotel or motel — as well as to cover the costs of their meals while they're not at home, until the fracking ends. But he said he's reluctant to leave his home and lawn and garden and the rest of his farmstead — including several goats he has there — unattended.

Encana's Wiedenbeck wrote in her email that "we work hard to manage the temporary impacts of our active operations, whether through the installation of hay bales and sound walls to address the noise or through offers of temporary housing and a related per diem."

She said Lozinski "declined this and other offers to offset the impacts," such as offers to install window air conditioning units at his house and to cover any additional utility costs that the Lozinskis might incur in running that air conditioning.

Lozinski said there also have been discussions of some sort of other forms of Encana compensation for the problems he said he's been experiencing during the fracking, although he said no agreement has been reached on that score.

Homeowner at the end of his rope

Meanwhile, temporary noise-abatement walls that Encana erected around part of its nearby operation haven't done enough to reduce that noise, Lozinski said — something he said he has been told the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission discovered for itself when it measured decibel levels with equipment it recently brought to his front yard.

Lozinski said that an inspector for that state agency told him that he has recommended that the COGCC director Matt Lepore order Encana to do its fracking during daytime hours only.

Lozinski said the inspector told him Friday afternoon that he has written a citation alleging that Encana has been violating the state agency's maximum noise decibel levels that apply to areas like that in which the Lozinskis' home sits.

Lozinski said he's been told that the citation is the equivalent of a ticket that Lozinski said could face Encana — if it's found to have been in violation of those standards — with daily fines dating back to July 28, when Lozinski initially contacted the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to complain about the noise.

Even so, the nighttime fracking, and the noise that came with it, resumed after midnight Friday, Lozinski said on Saturday, and lasted for several hours afterward

"I'm at my rope's end," Lozinski said.

Encana's Wiedenbeck said the company "initially received complaints from multiple areas nearby," but "at this point complaints have significantly decreased, if not stopped altogether, with one exception."

As for Lozinski's concerns about the inability to sleep getting in the way of properly performing his air traffic control duties, Wiedenbeck wrote: "Everyone has a responsibility to perform their work safely. We take that very seriously."

Said Wiedenbeck: "We continue to demonstrate a commitment to addressing the temporary impacts of drilling and completions. We believe that is a cost of doing business. It's the right thing to do."

Todd Hartman, the communications director for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, a department that includes the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, could not be reached for comment about Lozinski's situation and the COGCC 's response to Lozinski's noise complaint.

Noise-abatement walls alongside part of this Encana Oil and Gas facility, where the company has been injecting a pressurized mixture of water, sand and fracking chemicals to free up deep-underground oil and gas deposits, haven't done enough to reduce the operation's noise, says Mike Lozinski, whose rural home property sits about 325 yards northeast of the facility alongside Weld County Road 15. (Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call)

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